Intolerant People Opposing an AiG-backed Billboard

Many of you will be familiar with AiG’s “I am not ashamed” campaign. As part of this campaign, AiG designed a number of billboards to let the Bible speak for itself as it touches on some of the major issues of the day.

Here are illustrations of the five billboards:

This week, our publicist received a phone call from a reporter enquiring about the billboards—particuarly the one that quotes Jesus in Mark 10 when He states that God made marriage to be “male and female.” Jesus also makes a similar statement in Matthew 19 (i.e., God “made them male and female”) where He quotes from Genesis 1:27 when dealing with the issue of marriage. Well, an article appeared on the website of the Gainesville (Georgia) newspaper, The Georgia Voice, that began with this headline: “Gainesville, Ga., billboard demeans same-sex marriage.”

It’s all in the way you say things, isn’t it? How about a headline that states, “Billboard quotes Bible on Marriage” or “Billboard quotes Jesus on Marriage”?

No, a “gay activist” newspaper wouldn’t want a positive message like that. Because of the obvious anti-Christian agenda, they show their intolerance for the Bible even in the headline.

Maybe we should have an article in response, something like, “Article demeans the Bible on marriage?” After all, we use the billboard message to just let the Bible speak for itself.

Now, there are those who don’t agree that marriage is to be only a man and a woman. And they are obviously free to believe this (even if we believe, based on the Bible, they are wrong). Of course, people who disagree usually call us intolerant, as they want us to allow all views in regard to marriage. But they themselves don’t want to allow the view that marriage is to be only between a man and a woman, and it is God’s Word that reveals to us the origin and meaning of marriage because God’s Word is the absolute authority.

In fact, without the absolute authority of God’s Word, why bother even talking about marriage? Why even insist on any form of marriage? It becomes just an opinion, so why not just a free-for-all in regard to such relationships?

What I find is that people who don’t agree with what we believe concerning marriage and what the Bible teaches often become intolerant of us citizens, and intolerant of our right to hold that belief.

But it certainly is a sign of the times—concerning the spiritual state of this nation—when there is such negativity about our billboard quoting a positive message from the Bible.

The article continues with the following:

A billboard featuring an anti-gay message went up last month just off Georgia 53 and the Atlanta Highway between Flowery Branch and Gainesville, Ga.

GA Voice reader Emily Perkins-Henderson spotted the billboard late last month and sent us several photos of the anti-gay advertisement.

The billboard reads: “The Bible speaks for itself on marriage. God made them male and female – Mark 10:6.”

The billboard goes onto say that it was “sponsored by joyous and generous people.”

“It's an attack on equal marriage, and it's really disgusting,” Perkins-Henderson said via e-mail. “I don't understand why there even needs to be such a billboard up when there are no initiatives regarding marriage in the state of Georgia.”

First of all, the sponsoring of this billboard has nothing to do with making a political statement; it has to do with freedom of speech and a group of Christians sponsoring it to bring to the public’s attention what the Bible states concerning marriage.

Atheists have billboards up across the nation telling people there is no God, so why is this same reporter not writing an article stating, “Atheist Billboards Demean Christianity”? Why is this reporter (and the person quoted above) not complaining about the anti-Christian message of the atheist billboards? No, they wouldn’t do that, as they are tolerant of atheism but intolerant of Christians who quote God’s Word in public!

Such an article is a good reminder that just because some different people have been recently elected to Congress and the Senate does not mean America’s problems can be solved/dealt with. It is not until America can say, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord” (another one of our billboards), that America will again receive the blessing of God as it has in the past. America’s problems are not just economic but spiritual! This nation needs to return to the Creator God of the Bible, which is the solution for America.

Here’s a very positive—and ironic—aspect to this article: an article in a gay-activist newspaper has shown a photograph of the billboard, a billboard that actually quotes a verse of Scripture! Thus everyone who reads this article will see (and hopefully read) this verse from the book of Mark. As we know that God’s Word will not return to Him void and is “sharper than any two-edged sword” (Isaiah 55:11; Hebrews 4:12); “faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God” (Romans 10:17). Let’s pray that those who read this article will be convicted by God’s Word as they read that verse given to us by a holy God.

I encourage you and your church (or perhaps even a group of business people) to band together and sponsor one of these attractive billboards in your community. We can make it easy for you to do this, which includes finding the billboard companies in your area and producing and shipping the finished artwork.

As I close, consider these passages of Scripture as our devotional for today:

And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?” (Matthew 19:4-5)

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them. (Romans 1:16–32)